Amalthia's recs and fan works

Do you know how to cook and what's your best/favorite thing to cook if so? :)

I do. I'll make a distinction between baking and cooking because I learned how to bake while I was kid, but I didn't really learn how to cook until I was in my late 20s.

Baking, I love to make breads, but I learned to bake because of a perennial sweet tooth. One of my favorite recipes is a fairly easy cream cheese cheesecake. The secret is to make your own crust. Oh. And to use the sugar to break up the cream cheese, just like you'd cream sugar into butter. wildernessguru went to the cheesecake factory, shook his head disappointed, because homemade was better. (I suspect they box up the different cheesecakes now and ship them, and that's why some of the flavor is gone by the time they hit your plate.)

I've made other, weirder things. For example, I once found a recipe for marshmallows. Yes, I actually know what goes into those. (They came out okay, if a bit, um, square.)

In terms of cooking, I'm a fan of Indian and Thai recipes. I've never been able to do the sauces (I need a food processor to grind the onion, garlic, and ginger that forms the base into paste) but frying the sharp spices so they permeate everything else -- yes. I want a real mortar and pestle to grind the spices, but for now I make do.

My favorite recipe is one that started as a Middle Eastern curry from a cookbook. Then over the space of a year as I'd be missing an ingredient, or add something, I started frying the spices first, then I started adding fish sauce... eventually I came up with a chicken dish with Thai coconut milk and fish sauce and traditional Indian spices. wildernessguru calls it restaurant quality, but I think I've made it a bit too often because we're both sick of it at the moment. ;)

You know that WG cooks, too, right?

Icarus